Just Another Political Post.

[kandrathe]

I'm NOT going to be dragged into an abortion tiff. What I will say is that, while I don't agree with your blanket characterization of 'what it means to be liberal' (which is overly general and seemingly ignorant of the fact that 'liberty' can be decontested/conceived in a many different ways), you have answered your own question within your own definition of the term: it is not any less logical to say that an unborn child ought to be considered a legal individual than to say that the opposite is true.
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Being somewhat a libertarian, this problem is particulary thorny for me. I don't see this as a Pro-choice vs Anti-choice problem, I see it as a classification problem. The fetus is either the "property" of the pregnant mother and she can do with it as she pleases, or it is "an individual" to which we can determine rights. We can argue the medical ethics later, but if a person wanted to sell off one of their kidney's it would be a property issue. If someone wants to have the right to scarify their body, that is an individuals right over their own body.

What is complicated is that at birth, suddenly in a matter of hours to minutes the fetus transitions from having no rights to having full rights. Nevermind that it was viable outside the womb for the past 3-4 months had it been born prematurely. But, to ascribe full personhood to a fertilized egg the day after conception seems somewhat over-zealous (at least in scientific terms). So there must be a transition from non-personhood(very early in pregnancy) to personhood (very late in pregnancy). But where do we draw that line? When it has a beating heart, or an active brain? I don't know. I do know that abortion is not a substitute for birth control, and I fear that some abortions are murder.